March 27, 2014, Los Angeles Meeting Minutes

The Immigration and Globalization working group (IGWG) had a full track of great workshops at the UALE 2014 conference in LA. These sessions included presenters from Colombia, Morocco, Palestine, Vietnam and Brazil. Thanks to all of the workshop presenters and especially to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center for coordinating four of the panels and funding the international travel for many of the workshop participants. The topics included: Combatting child labor through trade law and union organizing; the failure of the Labor Action Plan in protecting workers' rights in Colombia; new organizing for the new economy; inclusive offsite organizing efforts in Morocco and Palestine; strengthening international partnerships in labor education and worker empowerment, Vietnam case study; winning against multinationals, and a report on incarceration and deportation in the US.

IGWG Meeting at UALE conference report: Mary Bellman, myself, Robin Clark Bennett and José Soler were there and we had a brief discussion. Mary and I are willing to be the co-chairs for another year.

As part of our work last year, we submitted four working group proposals, and identified several more from those submitted to the conference planning committee to make up a full track of IGWG workshops. We made a conscious effort to make sure the internationally themed sessions were framed around issues (as comparative examples that could be helpful for our work.) As in other years, the conference had a lot of great workshops concurrent with our sessions, so sometimes the participation in the IGWG track was lower than what we wanted. This is understandable, but disappointing, especially when some of the presenters traveled to the conference from another country. My suggestion is that if we are going to continue to submit proposals for a full track as a working group, members should try to attend at least one session. For the 2015 conference, we could submit proposals as a working group, or alternatively, work with the overall conference committee to make sure there are workshops and plenaries that reflect a global perspective and issues related to immigration. I will be on the conference planning committee.

Thanks to Tony Michael, Kent Wong (and the rest of the planning committee and E Board) for all of their hard work on this year's conference.